Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein ought to have had a great deal to talk about. Their origins were very similar: both Viennese Jews; both left and went to English-speaking countries; between them, they alerted the English-speaking world to the currents of philosophical thought evolving in Vienna and, between them, changed the whole tenor of philosophical investigations. They had similar, prickly personalities, and similar personal austerities; both became the unwilling object of a cult.

But the only occasion they are recorded meeting ended with Wittgenstein taking a poker to Popper and having to be restrained. They regarded each other, in fact, with undisguised hostility and contempt. Perhaps, when two people are very similar, their differences always become a mark of conspicuous contention; think how strange it would be if only one of a pair of identical twins decided to have her ears pierced, how it would draw the eye.

The philosophical differences between Popper and Wittgenstein were vast, and probably could not have been bridged, but one feels that their unremitting hostility towards each other came from a deeper, odder source. They looked at each other and saw that was what they might have become, what they had rejected, and their contempt rose.

Wittgenstein's greatness and originality is probably beyond question now and was promptly recognised. When he handed in his first book as his thesis, G.E. Moore's examiner's report read: 'It is my personal opinion that Mr Wittgenstein's thesis is a work of genius; but be that as it may, it is certainly well up to the standard required for the Cambridge degree of doctor of philosophy.'

But in many ways, Popper was the more recognisable philosopher. Where Wittgenstein dismissed most of the traditional questions of philosophy, such as ethics and metaphysics, in favour of a discussion of pure linguistic concepts, Popper always remained more worldly. The Open Society and its Enemies, a wildly controversial attack on Plato, is the sort of engaged book which philosophy has always produced.

Wittgenstein would have denied that it was philosophy at all, and the Philosophical Investigations represent something quite new and not in any sense - in the famous formula - a 'footnote to Plato'.

Wittgenstein's story is well known and still alarming. He came from an extremely rich Viennese family and gave away all his money (he said later, with uncharacteristic silliness: 'If you were going for a long hike up a steep mountain, you would deposit your weighty rucksack at the bottom'). Still, those patrician values had an odd way of surfacing in later life - he startled Cambridge friends by describing the gowns at a Trinity May Ball as 'tawdry' - and perhaps gave him the confidence to dismiss the work of contemporaries, not at all politely.

Not just contemporaries, either; to Wittgenstein, the whole tradition of German idealism was nothing more than, as Edmonds and Eidenow say, 'obfuscation, mumbo-jumbo and muddle-headedness'.

Wittgenstein was famously rude; when poor Lydia Lopokova said on a walk: 'What a beautiful tree', Wittgenstein barked back: 'What do you mean?' and she dissolved into tears. Talking to philosophers, Wittgenstein saw rudeness as a necessary dismissal; to discuss many of the traditional questions of philosophy was to reveal oneself as a charlatan.

Not everyone went along with the exhilarating dismissals of Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle; A.J. Ayer later said: 'Well, I suppose the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false.'

Popper led the charge against, describing Wittgenstein's picture theory of language as 'hopelessly and indeed outrageously mistaken'. For Popper, the clearing out of philosophical discourse was the first task, not the only one, of the philosopher; cleaning the glasses through which the philosopher must then peer.

He believed in the existence of philosophical questions and when he was invited to talk on the subject to a Cambridge discussion group, the stage was set for disagreement and physical assault.

Not much is known about the details of the meeting, but it forms an intriguing centre to this entertaining and thoughtful book. There are enough very funny stories about Wittgenstein to make the story interesting even to a resolute non-philosopher like me, who shrinks from propositions like 'All non-ravens are non-black'.

Who won? Well, in some sense, Wittgenstein, since his ideas powerfully shaped all postwar thought and directed our attention towards the linguistic world. But Popper, in the end, made as considerable an impact - he was Mrs Thatcher's favourite philosopher, after all - and it is difficult not to reflect that Wittgenstein's stance, though a necessary one, resembles someone trying to turn back the tide.

People will always go on talking about questions of ethics and metaphysics and it takes more than a few Cambridge philosophers to dissuade them. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we will go on guessing, I suppose.

About this article

Observer review: Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

This article appeared on p15 of the Observer Review section of the Observer
on Saturday 14 April 2001.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 12.55 EDT on Sunday 15 April 2001.
It was last modified at 12.55 EDT on Tuesday 8 May 2001.
It was first published at 12.55 EDT on Tuesday 8 May 2001.